What Compressor 3 MP4 settings should I choose for a 10 min 9GB QT video (exported from FCP) to be uploaded onto a website?

[Craig Seeman]

You do not want to use Compressor 3 for MP4. Compressor 3 can not encode to H.264 MP4. It can encode the H.264 .mov or, using iOS preset H.264 .m4v which you can change to .mp4 but you have no control over the settings.

“Too big” is a bit vague. You need to include information about the frame size and content (fast motion, talking heads, etc) to have some idea of what the data rate should be.

[Peter Dunphy]

Thanks so much for replying Craig. I’ve only ever encoded videos for YouTube or DVD so this is new for me.

It’s 1920 x 1080 QT FCP Export from a standard ProRes 422 Sequence.

Content wise – fixed shots of talking heads mostly, static shots of software, static wide shots of people in a classroom.

10mins 25secs running time.

Actually, it’s Compressor 3.5.3 I have (the one with ‘Final Cut Studio’) – silly me. Does that make any difference?

I came across this tutorial https://www.kylegilman.net/2011/02/25/making-mp4-h-264-videos-in-apple-compressor/ “Making MP4 H.264 Videos in Apple Compressor” from February 25th, 2011.

Peter Dunphy

2 x 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 8 GB 1066 MHz DDR3, ATI Radeon HD 4870, ATTO ExpressSAS R380, Sonnet D800 Raid 5

[Craig Seeman]

[peter dunphy] “I’ve only ever encoded videos for YouTube”

When encoding for YouTube you’d of course be using a much higher data rate since they’d be compressing it again. In this case you’ll be doing it directly.

[peter dunphy] “Actually, it’s Compressor 3.5.3 I have (the one with ‘Final Cut Studio’) – silly me. Does that make any difference?
“

No difference. Compressor 3.x does not do H.264 .mp4.
The new Compressor 4 does do H.264 .mp4
Ironically Quicktime Pro 7 has been able to do H.264 .mp4 for some time, just not Compressor until Compressor 4 arrived.

[peter dunphy] “It’s 1920 x 1080 QT FCP Export from a standard ProRes 422 Sequence.

Content wise – fixed shots of talking heads mostly, static shots of software, static wide shots of people in a classroom.

10mins 25secs running time.”

If you want to know what YouTube would do (they do a pretty good job) find a similarish video at 1920×1080 and download it and look at the data in MediaInfo. You must download the file without encoding or converting though.

Safari does this easily. Play the YouTube video you want at 1920×1080. Go to Window/Activity in Safari. When you get the Activity list look for the file that’s much larger than the rest and growing. Click on that and it should download.

Of course you may find the data rate you’d need for a 1920×1080 video a bit high for your viewers. You might consider 1280×720 instead. You’d have to have a good idea of the internet connection speed and computer capabilities of their computers. That’s why some offer several sizes, just as YouTube does.

This article is old (about two years old now) and doesn’t include 1920×1080 but it does tell you what Jan Ozer found for 1280×720 files on YouTube. It may have changed in two years though. Do your own investigation. Also note that at similar data rates your file would look better because YouTube’s is compressing an already compressed file.
https://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/youtubes-new-hd-formats.html

[Craig Seeman]

This article mentions what YouTube does with 1080.
https://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/youtube-does-1080p-with-h264.html

BTW, if your source is 1080i instead of 1080p, don’t forget to deinterlace.

[Peter Dunphy]

HI Craig

Thanks so much for your highly informative posts. Is there any software freely available (even a demo of something) I could use instead of Compressor?

Peter

Peter Dunphy

2 x 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 8 GB 1066 MHz DDR3, ATI Radeon HD 4870, ATTO ExpressSAS R380, Sonnet D800 Raid 5

[Craig Seeman]

[peter dunphy] “Thanks so much for your highly informative posts. Is there any software freely available (even a demo of something) I could use instead of Compressor?”

Sure, MPEGStreamclip is free and does H.264 .mp4. Some people like Handbreak but I’m partial to MPEGStreamclip. Handbreak is certainly worth a try because it uses a better H.264 codec though (X264). I’ve bumped into occasional compatibility issues with it though.

[Peter Dunphy]

Excellent, thanks Craig, I will absorb all the info you gave me and give MPEG Streamclip a whirl for now. Will post back with how I get on. Fingers crossed :o)

Peter Dunphy

2 x 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 8 GB 1066 MHz DDR3, ATI Radeon HD 4870, ATTO ExpressSAS R380, Sonnet D800 Raid 5

[Peter Dunphy]

Hi Craig

Once in the “MPEG Streamclip – MPEG-4 Exporter” should I choose ‘Compression: H.264’ or ‘Compression: Apple MPEG4 Compressor’?

Peter Dunphy

2 x 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 8 GB 1066 MHz DDR3, ATI Radeon HD 4870, ATTO ExpressSAS R380, Sonnet D800 Raid 5

[Craig Seeman]

H.264. The other one is much like the older not good one that Compressor 3 uses.

[Peter Dunphy]

Okay great, thanks :o)

Peter Dunphy

2 x 2.66 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 8 GB 1066 MHz DDR3, ATI Radeon HD 4870, ATTO ExpressSAS R380, Sonnet D800 Raid 5